See the GNU information manual for more information on these
topics. GRUB is under active development, and even more features
are planned for future releases.

In this brave GNU world, with vast acreage of cheap hard disk
and a glut of great free OSes available, you really need a flexible
and user-friendly boot loader to manage them all. Grab GRUB and
give it a go.

Wayne Marshall
(guinix@yahoo.com) is a UNIX programmer and technical consultant
currently living in Guinea, West Africa. When not grubbing about
with computers, he enjoys taking the pirogue for day trips to the
local islands near Conakry with his wife, Paula.

I want to use Win and Solaris 9. But since I installed Solaris 10, I no longer can reinstall WIN95/ Xp or Vista. I get this Windows blue Screen of Death everytime it begins the installation process. Should I use KILL DISK to solve this issue?

I am trying to dual boot Fedora and Windows 7. All I know is that Fedora boots from /dev/sdc1 and Windows 7 should be booting from what is /dev/sdb1. I am not sure what I need to put in grub.conf. I am not sure how the /dev/sdb1 corresponds to hd0, etc. Here is what I have: Can someone please help? Thank you, metafizik

I think you need to change the 'rootnoveryify' statement to something like 'rootnoverify (hd1,0)' assuming that the Windows partition is on a separate hard disk and is on the first partition of that hard disk. If not, let me know the partition structure and I'll try to help with my limited knowledge!

I'm not sure this is the right websire for my problem but i'll try anything now.

I have a laptop with Windows XP. I partitioned the drive and installed opensolaris on the second partition. No wheneveri turn on the laptop, Grub opens and only gives me the option for Solaris and not wiondows. I haven't been able to boot to Windows since. I've seen alot about editing the command lines for Grub but i'm new to this.

Does anyone have any idea's on how to solve this? i feel like it's not such a big thing but it's beating me right now.

Yea I'm having the hardest time getting this to work. I'm not the most tech savy person, but I can follow instructions pretty well. I need a IT next to me to solve this equation. I've had an easier time creating a good tax resolution compared to making this run properly. It looks pretty awesome, and I'd love to make it work on my laptop. Basically I'm just asking for a dummy explanation. It's just not sinking in.

i have an Acer Travelmate 5520 laptop, which i have two OS
running on it
1.WindowsXP
2.Ubuntu (Linux)

Both where working fine until now, all i did was to switch my laptop off
and now when im trying to switch it back ON it does not load
the menu or anything. it just stuck at GRUB_ with blincking
cursor, it does not allow me to type or do anything.

I dont want to format the computer as i will loose data, is
there anything i can do to recover from this nightmare???

please help me As Soon As Possible as I have important documents
saved in there

Hi
I want to run a dual boot system, with Windows on one hard drive and Ubuntu on the other. I had some major hassles when I tried to do this before unaided, not understanding about needing a suitable bootloader. Now, I dare not open the Ubuntu disk again because it took me ages to sort the mess out last time (then, foolishly I got help from a computer shop...) Eventually I had to reinstall Windows XP because I need my computer running. I want to use Linux but am not (yet) technically sophisticated. Can someone please give me some simple instructions how to set up a dual-boot system (2 separate hard drives on 1 computer), so I can get started. I tried contacting a local Linux users group but after 15 emails and no reply I gave up. I also need to know which mobile broadband modems support Linux.

Marlowe, if you put the Ubuntu disk into your CDROM when windows is running it does an autoplay and (at least in Vista) asks if you want to install Ubuntu under windows. The nice thing about this is that you get the dual boot option, yet it is installed under windows (which means you can remove it in like manner). Alternatively, if you boot from the CDROM that has Ubuntu you can either boot from the CDROM and run Ubuntu that way (of course, nothing will be saved and it isn't very useful) or you can perform the install. Performing the install should automatically create a dual boot system, as Ubuntu will install grub with a menu allowing you to choose XP or Ubuntu. If you have problems you can perform searches on grub or lilo. It might be a good idea to research grub and lilo before performing the install to get a good idea of what should happen. I am old hate when it comes to Solaris on SPARC machines, but have only dabbled with Linux on my own. I have successfully changed the boot menu default in the past using grub by following web page instructions (unfortunately the manual pages under linux are a bit difficult to parse, as they only give brief descriptions of options).

upgraded from xp to vista, and dumb me listened to a computer bud to activate free. Well, when the activator restated my module it put me into this grub thing I understand nothing about and don't know what to do. If it requires reformating my C: how can I when I can't access the partition?

I am actively searching for a solution nothing has hork. Says must load kernel, but how? root (0,0) gets a "cannot mount selected partition, and not option for windows. My module is an old dell but was in fair order til I let someone else mess with it.

GRUB is now in your MBR (Master Boot Record)... In XP when I was tinkering with Linux and no longer wanted it (or GRUB) on my hard drive I just deleted the MBR. Go to a command prompt and just type (without the quotes) "del mbr" then press Enter and reboot. Done! =0) It will restore to a previous backed up version of your MBR and boot Windows as normal.

hi, well my hp laptop was running on vista and i installed ubuntu on my ext hd. The problem is i cant boot without plugging in my hd cause i guess the menu.lst is in the linux partition of my ext. hd. It shows a device not found error. Is there any way to relocate the menu.lst file to some where in my windows partition (hp gives only one) and make grub look for it there.

cannot boot packard bell laptop after installing ultimate ubuntu on an external usb 500gig hard drive. if i boot with the usb drive pluged in it (grub i think) gives me the option to boot ubunto on the usb drive or windows on the internal hard drive. if i remove the usb drive and boot the laptop without it, it says that no hard drive is recognised. has grub alterd the MBR on the internal drive. can any one help . thanks john

Hi!
I am using FEDORA 10 as my OS. It hung so I did a cold boot and after that I find that I get "GRUB>". How am I to recover and restore my OS? I would appreciate all help.
Thanks in advance
Jamesjayant.james@gmail.com

# edit file /boot/grub/menu.lst to have the following similar lines.
# uncomment by deleting the leading pound sign character '#' at the beginning of each line
#
#
# examples assume that the First Hard Disk drive has 2 primary partitions
@ /dev/hd0,0 is the first partition containing Windows
# /dev/hd0,1 is the second partition containing Linux
#
title Windows 95/98/NT/2000
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
#
title Linux
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 ro
# kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda2 ro if newer Linux kernel

From a friends computer download the .ISO file and burn image to disk
to create a LiveCD bootable Puppy Linux CD.
You can use Grub from running PuppyLinux from CDROM to create file /boot/grub/menu.lst
and then run grub to install the Grub Boot Loader to your MBR of your first hard disk drive.
ie the Master Drive connected at the end of the Primary drive 40 pin cable.

You can use a USB Flash disk to boot your computer in place of a CDROM.
Use the Windows program from http://www.linuxlivecd.com to install puppylinux
to a USB Flash Disk Drive. Then edit your BIOS boot order or select Boot from USB Flash Drive first.

I hope the above note and the above links help you recover your Windows and Linux installation.
Please reply here with any corrections, further questions or updates. I am not perfect.
Respectfully, Fred L. Finster WB7ODY

i have two operating system(windows xp and linux el4.5). at first i installed linux. next i attached a sata hard disk and installed xp. i installed grub in rescue mode but i can't choose any one of the os from the grub. if chang the first boot device from bios then we can boot each os individually. but without setting of bios i can't.

In my system also - 2 250G hd - Grub suddenly started to acting up during the boot. I used Puppy Linux Live CD to recover data - it took quite all day long. I went back to the evil empire, because that kind of bug in Linux usually take a year or two to be solved, see the hard drive load problem with the laptops, till now the user have to use the ugly solution to save the hd...

sir,
i have installed Redhat linux on window xp machine. After the installation linux is working with no problem. When i restart my system it showed a menu to choose an operating system. I pressed window xp. But window is not working.

Is there a way to install multiple OSes on one computer using Grub 2? I tried adding PCLinuxOS 2009 after Windows Vista and Ubuntu 9.10 but it just gives me errors and I cannot get into PCLinuxOS. Is there a step by step guide to using Grub 2, which is default on Ubuntu 9.10, to install multiple OSes on a computer?

I do believe in the updating of tolls even such as Grub, however, it should be easier to install multiple OSes as this is an important thing since there are many flavors of Linux. All the walk-throughs tend to use Grub 1 (for want of a better term).

Any ideas?

I want to install Linux Mint, PClinuxOS and I already have Ubuntu 9.10. I also want to be able to swap any of the last two to test other linuxes.

My main gripe with grub is that unlike lilo, it has no test mode, where you can check that your new menu.lst actually makes sense, and that it's on a filesystem that will be visible to the grub that will boot.

I've screwed up my menu.lst file dozens of times, and then had to struggle with a printed grub manual to run grub interactively to boot the system, or else boot from a live CD (usually easier, frankly). Most of these mini disasters could have been avoided if grub had a method of testing if the menu.lst file is probably going to work. Not all of them were my fault. I remember one fun time when I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 to get grub failing with "Error 2" - this was thanks to ext3 changing from 128 bit to 256 bit inodes.

The article is also looking a bit old: many distros now use grub2 instead of grub, and they're not the same.

And info on grub and mirrored raid would be worthwhile. I have / and /alt-slash, both raid (/dev/md1 as / now and /dev/md0 as /alt-slash), for trying out new or alternative distros. This means I have to do this when updating menu.lst:

it can installed linux by live cd but the problem is that with this way is many of the linux features may cant work during linux operation so we have to install linux with the traditional process so can avail us the all full featured linux utilities.

I am having IBM thinkpad R52. It is having an EISA configuration partition with IBM_SERVICE name, which can be access by pressing ACCESS IBM button in startup. But its not working. Partition is there it is not deleted.

I want to use restore factory format option from rescue and recovery partition.

The sizes of image file increase accordingly. When you double click the image it displays as a normal image. To retrieve the zipped file just right click on the particular image and open it with WinZip/WinRAR, and the archived files will be visible now.You can also change the extension of the image file to .zip so that the hidden files can be accessed simply by double clicking on it.